Blogs

We are very thrilled with the class of 2025 IBM Champions and with the increased focus on developers.  The following are some preliminary suggestions on what we might work on together giving us all the chance to augment our skills and build our networks, as well as advocating for technologies that we all think are important.

• Meetups:  IBM has a meetup network https://www.meetup.com/pro/ibm-community/ We'd love to work with you, e.g.,  if you would like to lead or co-lead one of these communities, or to speak at an event. Do take a look at the list, and check if there is a community you would like be a part of. Please contact me on slack if you would like to proceed.
• Open Source Activities: For those of you who are interested in making contributions to open source (or already do so): we'll look for opportunities for you to contribute to projects via code, documentation, guidelines, presentation materials and so on. You can see a list of open source projects that IBMers work on here:
  • https://developer.ibm.com/open/projects/ -  the list is always evolving.
• Granite Models: We are encouraging the following Granite Hands-On Workshop to be delivered in as many places as possible: https://ibm.github.io/granite-workshop/ because it is modular, relatively straightforward to complete, while being educational at the same time - Give it try, perhaps you can present the workshop to one of your communities. Let me know in slack if you need help identifying a venue to present this workshop. And if you are interested in Granite, take a look here https://ibm.biz/granite-community. Consider trying out these Cooking with Granite Recipes and adapting them for your use cases - perhaps even preparing industry case studies which could be published. 
  
• Foundations: I am active in the Linux Foundation AI and Data and co-chair the Responsible AI Workstream that is part of the Generative AI Commons. If you would like to get involved in the Linux Foundation, we can help you achieve that goal. For example we can guide you how to join foundation working sessions and contribute. And if you engage, you may be able to then publish blogs on various Linux Foundation websites, or chair a panel at an upcoming event. 
• Presenting at Conferences: The Call for Proposals at the Open Source Summit North America (23-25 June 2025 - Denver) will close on February 16. Do consider submitting a proposal. We'll try to highlight conference proposal deadlines to help you get involved in conferences and workshops. And by the way, a number of IBMers and Red Hatters presented at FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) recently.  You may like to take a look.
• Being Informed: If there is great content we think will help you be up-to-date, we'll highlight it. An example is this excellent video where panelists Kate Soule, Aaron Baughman, and Chris Hay tackled DeepSeek R1 misconceptions, explained model distillation, and dissected the open-source competition landscape.
• Hackathons: We'll highlight hackathons that we think will appeal to you and your communities - as mentors, judges, or participants.

There are many activities we can work on together. The list above is just a sample. We are looking forward to getting to know you and collaborating.